The Ghostway Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the sixth of Hillerman's "Navajo Detective" series and the third in which Jim Chee is the main character. In "Ghostway" Hillerman explores the conflict of a Navajo drawn to the White world. Jim Chee is in love with a White school teacher, Mary Landon, and he contemplates marrying her and leaving the reservation to take a job as an FBI agent. But he is also pulled in the opposite direction to become a "singer" and preserve the Navajo ceremonies that are being forgotten as the old timers die off. Chee's preoccupation with the personal choices he must make are always near the surface of this mystery novel.
Hillerman, as always, celebrates the magnificience of the Navajo land and the Navajo's sensitivity to their natural surroundings. And, as always, the knowledge of their land and people give Hillerman's detectives the insight they need to solve the mystery.
"Ghostway" begins with a shootout in the parking lot of a laundromat in Shiprock, New Mexico that leaves two men dead. The story is not one of Hillerman's best or most credible but the character of Margaret Sosi, an entrancing, 15-year old girl wearing a black pea coat makes up for plot deficiencies. We want this girl to live -- but Hillerman readers know he has cruelly killed off children in other novels in the series.
Hillerman novels contain no sex whatsoever, but "Ghostway" comes closer than about any other to intimating that Jim Chee and Mary Landon might have engaged in something more than romantic conversation.

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Devil's Slew: A Barrett Raines Mystery Review

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(More customer reviews)Florida Department of Law Enforcement Agent Barrett "Bear" Raines attends a little league game when duty calls. In the Devil's Slew swamp, Afghan vet Quentin Hart has taken his girlfriend prisoner. Bear and Sheriff Smoot Rawlings arrive at the scene hoping to talk down the angry former combat soldier with no body getting hurt. Instead, Quentin races out of his home holding his automatic rifle pointed at the cops. They kill him as each knows the veteran committed suicide by cop.
Bear feels depressed over the incident though he knows he and Smoot did the right thing. He investigates Quentin's last days trying to understand why he snapped. Aided by other law enforcement officials he soon uncovers a connection to vets involved in counterfeiting and money laundering. The FBI believes they kidnapped and beheaded one of their agents in New Orleans. As the evidence mounts that this is a dangerous gang based in Florida but working in Mexico and Afghanistan, someone is targeting these vets for death.
Devil's Slew is a fascinating police procedural in which the chaotic story line showcases how convoluted an investigation can become. Fast-paced from the moment Bear and Smoot arrive in the aptly named swamp and never slowing down, readers will appreciate Darryl Wimberley connecting dots between Florida, Mexico and Afghanistan in Bear's latest thriller (see Pepperfish Keys).
Harriet Klausner


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The Narrows Review

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(More customer reviews)Looking for proof that Michael Connelly is the best mystery novelist today? The Narrows is evidence enough. On a very simple level, this is a mystery novel about a serial killer, "The Poet," and at least 14 murders attributed to him in this current wave of mayhem. It's also about a complex ex-LAPD homicide detective, Harry Bosch, and a frustrated FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit reject agent, Rachel Walling. The characters are complex, conflicted, believable, and stretched beyond what is expected but not beyond the potential of each soul. Even the two major locations, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, are drawn with such intensity and multi-faceted power that they almost become characters in themselves. The plot is intricate, surprising, and challenging -- but ultimately so finely composed and exquisitely executed that even the final shock in the last few pages, while completely unsuspected, still resonates with complete authenticity and credibility. And underneath everthing beats the heart of Michael Connelly's mission: to describe the deadly dance between good and evil, a dance that comes within a hair's breadth of consuming both, but ends with hope. The book opens with the powerful intensity of the threat of evil: "I knew that my life's mission would always take me to the places where evil waits, to the places where the truth that I might find would be an ugly and horrible thing. And still I went without pause. And still I went, not being ready for the moment when evil would come from its waiting place. When it would grab at me like an animal and take me down into the black water." And it ends with the dawn of hope: "I looked out at the city and thought it was beautiful. The rain had cleaned the sky out and I could see all the way to the San Gabriels and the snow-covered peaks beyond. The air seemed to be as clean and pure as the air breathed by the Gabrielenos and the padres so many years before. I saw what they had seen in the place. It was the kind of day you felt you could build a future on." And in between is the best fiction anywhere.

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Last Seen in Aberdeen: A Sergent Mornay Mystery (Scottish Mystery Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Young Matthew Adair was LAST SEEN IN ABERDEEN in broad daylight and then in the twinkling of an eye he vanished. No ransom demand was ever made and a Scottish task force was convened to find the child that caught the whole nation's attention. It was during a traffic accident when a horse trailer turned upside down that Matthews' lifeless body was found, the victim of blunt force trauma to the head. Also, inside the trailer were two dead lambs that belonged to Finovar Castle.
CID sergeant Seth Mornay is currently working the case trying to find the boy's killer. The job is not made easier by Deputy Justice Minister Lord Mindo Gordon, who is using Matthew's death to make a bigger name for himself by insisting the police are not working hard enough to find the killer. If that wasn't enough Mornay's father is under investigation for smuggling drugs and Pamela who is carrying his child is in a coma in a hospital while her sister is threatening to sue Seth for custody. Evidence in Matthew's murder seems to implicate the inhabitants of Finovar Castle and in particular David Lockward who refuses to tell the police where he was on the day Matthew was kidnapped.
M.G. Kincaid has written a brilliantly plotted British police procedural that stars Seth Mornay who first appeared in THE LAST VICTIM IN GLENN ROSS. Readers gain more insight into the complex character of the hero whose professional and personal lives are falling to pieces. LAST SEEN IN ABERDEEN gives armchair travelers a feel for what life in Scotland is like. This author's star is on the rise.
Harriet Klausner


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In her acclaimed mystery debut, M.G. Kincaid introduced the complex Scottish detective Seth Mornay. Now Mornay must solve a murder while caught between the spotlight of unwanted fame and the shadowy past he'd hoped to leave behind. After the events of The Last Victim in Glen Ross, the image-conscious authorities have branded CID Sergeant Mornay a hero -- a label he would rather shun. But when Mornay is assigned the high-profile case of a young boy's disappearance, his best efforts fail: the murdered boy's body is found not far from his home. While wading through a list of evasive suspects, Mornay's own life threatens to come undone when his long-estranged father becomes a prime suspect in a heroin smuggling case -- a situation made worse by the unwelcome return of a bitter adversary to the Grampian Police department. Now, with both his career and his father's life on the block, Mornay must overcome all obstacles -- both professional and personal -- in the hunt for a child killer....--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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A Fine Red Rain (Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery) Review

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(More customer reviews)The first Porfiry Rostnikov mystery I read by Stuart Kaminsky was one of the last one of the series. So I picked up A Fine Red Rain (his third) to gain some more background information. I was not disappointed.
Rostnikov sets out to investigate the deaths of two thirds of a high wire circus act (one a suicide and the other an "accident"). Rostnikov does not believe in coincidence, and when he interviews the third person in the act, he discovers that her life is in danger as well. The inspector finds that there is quite a bit of monkey business going on behind the scenes of the Moscow New Circus.
At the same time, Rostnikov's associates, Emil Karpo and Sasha Tkach are investigating cases of their own. Karpo is trying to track down a serial killer. Tkach has come across a black market for western goods. This subplot is quite fascinating, and gives us an interesting look at the extensive black market (along with accompanying police corruption) during the communist era.
Kaminsky's Rostnikov series is excellent, and I only regret that he hasn't been more prolific in writing these particular books. Fortunately for me, I have at least six or seven more to read. I'm already working on Rostnikov's Vacation.


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Twice Buried (Missing Mysteries) Review

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(More customer reviews)Having read several of the later Undersherrif Bill Gastner mysteries I found myself a little torn with this one.
I love the character of Bill Gastner. The characters in this series are particularly well-developed and realistic. The procedures in this book are thorough and seemingly well-depicted (I'm not a police officer but it seemed pretty kosher to me) except for one very large hole in the way the investigation developed - a whole line of investigation was ignored that seemed obvious to me. This hurt the integrity of the book in my eyes but I still give it 4 stars.
If you are a fan of Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police books you should check out this series.

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